Novelist Padgett Powell Takes The Reigns From Guest Blogger John Brandon For The SEC's Florida-LSU Week

John Brandon, who wrote the excellent novels Arkansas (2008) and Citrus County (out this past July) teaches down at Ole Miss these days, and he’ll be filing dispatches on all things SEC football throughout the season. Check out all of his posts here. This week, however, Powell has handed off the reigns to fellow Southern-based novelist Padgett Powell. Powell teaches at University of Florida and his most recent book is ’The Interrogative Mood.’ Brandon will be back on the job next week.

I am asked by Mr. Brandon, the Daddy of this space, to act this week, the week of Florida v. LSU 2010, as a guest Daddy to the blog. I have said No, to which Mr. Brandon has said, No, no, give me your phone number, I shall talk you into it. I have said Look, dude, I do not know enough arcana about football, like who is strong and who not, and who has taken laptops or made death threats in the week and so forth, and moreover I only watch football on TV and I know that that is like watching football as a girl, or a boy, who does not know the game, watches it—the field of view so limited that all one can see is who carries the ball and what happens to him. No, no, Daddy Brandon writes, you do not need to know depth charts and so forth, just hold forth. I am just a football bitch, I tell him, and the only thing that interests me is the freudenshage of watching certain coaches go down, writhing and seething stoically on the sidelines. Freudenshage is not the right word but it is the word that fills the void in my brain that wants the right word.

So I have assented to be the guest Daddy, but not to writing this the week FLA v. LSU. It is appearing this week, the week of FLA v. LSU, but I am writing this the week approaching FLA v. Alabama. Nick Saban, before he appeared in my mind to actually be a really good coach, was richly deserving of fredenshaopge for whatever went wrong in Tuscaloosa. When he was merely the quitter who left LSU and the quitter who left Miami and the turkey who would run headlong into the Bearwall in Tuscaloosa and be discredited for all his presuming, he was a great thing for freudenwinkingloating. Now he has proved himself capable—you might say even artful if you have seen the Little Debbie commercial for ESPN—and so cannot be made much fun of. Even wearing the panama fedora, which is Bear Bryant’s pork pie poofed into the 21st Century, and the Tressel-like polyester vest on the practice field, he cannot be laughed at. He’s too good. I’m sorry.

In five days his No. 1 team, which received last week a serious wake-up call from Arkansas, exactly what we at Florida hoped would not happen, will probably manhandle Florida, which last week against Kentucky fired up on at least four of its eight cylinders, some say twelve, which is also what we at Florida did not want to happen before this Alabama game. Saban and his boys will have closely noticed Florida’s firing up on two more of its cylinders than it had previously managed to fire, and Arkansas will have waked up the sleeping giant in them, and complacency’s setting in will have become disgust’s rumbling, and they will be sore, angry and alert, and this is bad news when they have, in Trent Richardson alone, running like a fire hydrant through saplings, enough to beat any team in the country. If anyone could have beaten Alabama this year, it will have been Florida, who, should it fire up cylinders seven and eight, maybe ten, could do it, could have done it, might have done it, we all know now but I did not as I write this now. I’m going to say 27-24 Florida. [Editor’s note: 31-6 ’Bama, in fact]

Plenty more after the jump...

The real story in the SEC is no longer Lane Kiffin, who was a freudenhonker so perfect that many of us now feel robbed forever of something irreplaceable. To have come in on his Oakland record popping off about singing Rocky Top all night long and accusing Oscar Meyer of recruiting violations put him ahead of Steve Spurrier as the coach for good old boys to despise by about three football fields. Spurrier did not come in with losing records, and he threw his hat, not crap at other coaches. Losing badly to Nebraska—Quez Green’s hip was broken the first play of the game—and asked at halftime what was wrong, he said, "We’re getting clobbered." In the Freudenshagging game, there was not a better moment, in fact, for a long time as when Spurrier’s lowly Gamecocks beat Oscar Meyer in Oscar’s first year at Florida.

That was before we fully appreciated how good Meyer is, who cannot be called Oscar anymore. We think he is so good now that we even have hopes that he will someday decide to get actual running backs at Florida instead of track stars that are flung down by saplings. I am hoping that Meyer can appeal to Saban and purchase the extra running backs in Tuscaloosa. I cannot imagine why Saban would sell him any, even third- and fourth-string, unless he drops his Little Debbie cakes that morning and loses focus. Such a slip seems to be our only prayer. Richardson and Ingram look like Paul Hornung and Jim Taylor, except that they look better. I’m sorry, they do. I expect that Saban will recruit Barry Sanders Jr.

Excuse me, I got off line. The real story in SEC freudengloating is Derek and the Dominoes Dooley. Same crazed AD, same losing-record syndrome, but in touching the godhead of Vince Dooley they have powered past hiring the son of, say, Don Shula to about the tenth power. A chip off the SEC Mount Rushmore is in Knoxville. The shadow is so august, in fact, that even a freudenwanker feels a little restrained, a little sad for Coach Dooley Jr. Has he done anything wrong, beyond apparently using some Grecian? No, he has only been hired by the same insistent effingup forces that fired fat Phil Fullmer and hired lame Kiffin. He is therefore in a rich force field of almost necessarily going down fast, but he is not deserving of abuse. I am not personally assaulting Vince’s boy, as funny as it is to see that yellow-orangey team trying to get into the Purina feedzone. If he’ll take to drinking and let the gray hair creep in, I think a naturally dishonorable death will obtain in five to seven years’ time.

Florida will dismember LSU, because Les Miles has the contract that allegedly guarantees him more money than any other coach in the SEC. That is chutzpah so grand that one cannot put the blame on the LSU AD where it belongs; the blame bleeds over onto the knave that asked for the contract and the boobs who supported him. Florida will fire on eleven cylinders, whether they have eight or twelve. Florida 41-LSU 14. I am saying this today September 27 in the year of our Lord 2010. Maybe I’d have done better if I could see the whole field.

What I can say with some real authority, because I can see the whole field, is that the real Daddy to this blog, Mr. Brandon, has written a first-rate book, possibly two, and if you are tired of this freudenwhingeing and nonsense writing which the e-age has loosed upon us like a beast moving its slow thighs and slouching unto us to be born, go read Arkansas by John Brandon and be satisfied. His second book, Citrus County, received a front-page NY Times Book Review rave, but I can’t speak for the book yet. Lemony Snicket found it fine, though you are not to call him Lemony Snicket when he writes reviews, only when he writes books. He might be perfect for the Vols in five years.

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